BATON ROUGE — Prosecutors downgraded a charge on Tuesday against the mother of Nevaeh Allen, a 2-year-old killed in 2021 and left in the woods near the Pearl River in southern Mississippi.

Lanaya Cardwell, 28, had faced a second-degree murder charge in the 2021 killing of her 2-year-old daughter. Prosecutors said she had struck the girl when she found her messing with her contact lenses. A jury last May convicted Cardwell's boyfriend, Phillip Gardner, of murder and hiding the girl's body in Mississippi.

Tuesday, prosecutors amended Cardwell's indictment to drop the murder charge and replace it with second-degree cruelty to juveniles and other related charges.

Last October, Cardwell rejected a plea deal that would have reduced the murder charge to a cruelty to juveniles charge and dropped her possible prison sentence from life to 10 years. 

She is set to go to trial in February.